


The Unexpected Complication

by until_the_earth_is_free



Series: The Littlest Ships That Could (Hannibal Edition) [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Car Crash, Asexual Character, Asexuality, First Dates, M/M, Pre-Slash, Season 1, chilton is canonically cuban okay i will fight you on this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:24:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1751057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/until_the_earth_is_free/pseuds/until_the_earth_is_free
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will crashes his car into Chilton's.<br/>That's basically it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

 

It was seven o'clock on a Friday and snowing when Frederick finally left his office, exhausted and rather worn down by another day of unresponsive, difficult patients and unfortunately god-awful hospital coffee. However, he had decided over lunch that day that he would reserve a table at his favourite free-lance restaurant as a treat to himself for surviving the week.

His car was, thankfully, still driveable despite the conditions and the psychiatrist estimated that it would take him around 15 minutes to safely get to the restaurant. Of course, he hadn't factored in the unexpected complication in the form of one Will Graham.

Patiently stationary at a red traffic light on a deserted road, Frederick glanced once into his rear-view mirror before hearing, and feeling, an audible thunk as the car behind him collided gently but firmly into his bumper.

Frederick sighed as he contemplated how much he did not need this hassle right now. Turning off his engine and unbuckling his seatbelt, he opened his car door and was immediately met with a gust of snow to the face. Wiping the horrible cold wetness off his face as best he could with the back of his hand, he walked over to the other car to confront its driver, who hadn't even left their seat.

How inconsiderate.

Through the other's foggy car window, Frederick could just make out a solitary shaking figure hunched over the driving wheel. He hoped to God that it wasn't an uninsured minor who was trying to figure out how to explain to their parents that they owed $700: he had had too much experience with helping people through panic attacks in one day, thank you very much.

After waiting a few more seconds and observing that the person in the car was not going to move from their position, glancing down the otherwise empty street, he knocked a little more harshly than he might have intended on the window.

"Excuse me?"

The hunched figure suddenly drew back, hands anxiously rubbing his forehead, before scrabbling for the door handle and emerging from the car, revealing that he was, in fact, more likely to be in his thirties, although the likelihood of an imminent panic attack was still pretty high.

Curiously, the man seemed not even to acknowledge Frederick's presence and, instead, walked right over to the front of his car to inspect the damage. Unfortunately for him, it appeared that the other car had suffered a pretty obvious scratch compared to his already badly scuffed station wagon.

"Oh, shit, I'm so sorry," the man mumbled, turning around to face the psychiatrist, although still not making any form of eye contact.

Frederick smiled out of politeness, but refrained from saying anything that would mean he assumed part of the blame. He had become very good at shifting the blame over the past few years.

"I'll, uh, I'll give you my details, then," the man said, rifling through the pocket of his terrible bomber jacket, before taking out a wallet containing his driving license and handing it over.

Frederick took out his phone and started to transcribe the man's name and license number, while "William" began pacing nervously back and forward, mumbling more profanities to himself. While the man seemed obviously occupied, Frederick quickly indulged his own nosiness and made a nimble scan of the rest of the wallet, discovering, to his great interest, that the shaky mess in front of him was a 'Special Agent of the FBI's Behavioural Sciences Unit'.

"FBI?" Chilton asked, his curiosity, not for the first time, getting the better of him.

William stopped his pacing and looked up.

"Uh, yeah, part-time," he replied and Frederick noticed that William's right hand was stimming slightly.

"Do you have your insurance company's number?" he asked.

"Right, yes, um, in my glove compartment," William muttered, apparently to the snow drift over Frederick's left shoulder, before diving back into his car, giving Chilton an excellent view of his rear, _not_ that the doctor was looking, and retrieving the information on a crumpled piece of A4 paper.

As Frederick was copying the number into his phone, he glanced back at the man's name and again to the shivering man in front of him.

Will Graham...

Oh yes. _That_ Will Graham. It all became extraordinarily clear. The man whose unusual empathy and imagination allowed him to assume the identity of killers.

Frederick had read quite a few articles about this man's fascinating psyche during the past few years and he may have felt slightly disappointed that, after all this time, the man he had been so profoundly fascinated by was, in reality, this anti-climactic nervous tic who was shuffling around in the snow in front of him. Not that he had imagined the fantasy Will Graham as a more impressive, stoically intelligent but desperately misunderstood genius with great eyebrows...

Clearing his throat and realising how wet he was becoming now under the falling snow, Chilton asked,

"are you sure you're in the right state to be driving right now?"

"Excuse me?" said Will, glaring back with the most striking instance of eye contact he had displayed yet.

"You are very welcome to ride in mine tonight," Chilton said, internally wincing at the implied euphemism and the horrific syntax of that sentence.

"I don't think-"

"I am a psychiatrist," Frederick blurted out. "You seem quite distressed; I could-"

"I don't need another psychiatrist rummaging around in my drawers," Will Graham replied angrily.

"How about a friend?"

There was a silence as the two men regarded each other, damp from the snow.

"I have a dinner reservation at a lovely authentic Cuban restaurant," Frederick continued. "You would be very welcome to join me."

Another pause, with no reply.

His shoulders sagging slightly at the rejection, the psychiatrist turned around and went back to his car.

"Where are you going? I didn't say 'no'," Will said, suddenly, almost as if the sentence surprised himself as much as it surprised Frederick. "Just give me a moment to park. I've never tried Cuban food before."

Frederick smiled, possibly for the first time that week.

"Well, you're in for a treat."

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Freddy have dinner <333

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Thank you to everyone for their kind comments on the last chapter- you are all darlings!!))  
> And happy birthday, [Katie](http://www.veqasliqhts.tumblr.com)!! I apologise for the delay but I hope the chapter was worth the wait...!  
> Disclaimer: My knowledge of Spanish, although marginally better than Will's, is limited to two years in high school so please correct me if I have made any mistakes! Also, I'm assuming that the Spanish they speak in Cuba is grammatically identical to the one they speak in Madrid, but I might be wrong, so if anyone with more expertise than me wants to give an opinion, I would appreciate it!  
> (Translations are in the end notes.)

 

 

 

 

The restaurant had a small and dark entranceway and Will briefly entertained the thought that he was about to die in some serial killer's murder dungeon, before frowning as he noticed how worryingly casual he had become at the idea of his own death.

Frederick glanced at Will's frown and started to panic that this little restaurant was not fancy enough for him and inwardly cursed himself that, out of all the stupidly pretentious places he frequented on his evenings off, the one day he was actually with someone he wanted to impress, he had chosen his most informal locale.

However, his panic dissipated when he saw the place's only waitress, Lucia, appear at the door with a familiar cheery smile.

"Una mesa para dos, por favor," he mumbled to her, feeling strangely self-conscious about speaking in Spanish in front of his guest, who merely raised an eyebrow in mild surprise at the discovery.

"¡Claro!" she replied, obviously not sharing the same insecurities as Frederick, before leading both him and Will into the next room, settling them down at a table near the window. It was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night- only one other party there, an apparent birthday celebration.

"Es guapo," Lucia whispered to Frederick as she passed him his menu, in the loud way that she did, which was usually endearing except for cases like these in which it was mortifying. "Bien hecho."

Then, with a small giggle, she poured them both a glass of water, winking at Frederick as she did so, rendering him still more embarrassed if that was even possible.

He glanced quickly at Will because, _surely,_ even if one had not spoken a word of Spanish in their life, they would be able to understand "guapo", or at least suspect something from the burning redness that had taken hostage of Frederick's face. But Will Graham was simply flicking through his menu, oblivious to the seemingly apocalyptic emotional intensity being experienced by the man across the table from him.

Well, at least _one_ thing about his week hadn't gone spectacularly wrong.

After a few minutes of Frederick pretending that he hadn't already decided what he was going to have several hours earlier and anxiously watching Will to see if he was even interested in this kind of food anyway because _wouldn't it be really fucking funny if it turned out that he was actually a vegan with eight different allergies_ , Will cleared his throat and glanced up at Frederick, who promptly looked back down at his own menu in case it was weird that he had been watching Will.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Oh God, right, I'd forgot, I'm Dr Frederick Chilton," Frederick replied, shocked that he hadn't already introduced himself, since he was usually so keen to impose his doctoral status upon others.

"Frederick," Will said, his hand nervously tapping against his water glass. "I'm really sorry but I have no idea what any of this means."

Frederick gave out a small, high laugh that caused Will to jump, startled by the unexpected noise, before blanching and replying,

"Well, if you're new to Cuban food, I would recommend you start with Moros y Cristianos because that's our most signature dish. This place also does a really great Ropa Vieja so we could order one of each and...?"

"Sounds good," Graham said shortly, closing his menu. "My dinner is now under your exclusive care."

That sounded like a lot of pressure...

What the fuck, Frederick? Since when were you the mentally unstable one?

Fortunately, Lucia, having spotted that the men probably needed some help, had already glided quickly over and asked for their order, which Frederick offered quickly and quietly, while Will leant back in his chair and breathed heavily.

"How are you feeling?" the psychiatrist asked, once Lucia had taken their menus and disappeared into the back kitchen.

"Long day." Which hadn't quite answered the question.

~O~

Will Graham was not in the habit of letting strange men spontaneously take him out to dinner, as a general rule. He had definitely become more reckless with his health recently, what with his return to the field and his refusal to let Dr Lecter poke around in his brain without putting up a fight, and now it was taking its toll.

He couldn't even remember bumping into Frederick's car, only the few seconds before and the slight jolt that had dislodged his dissociating mind from its sanctuary outside of reality and consciousness.

It was probably safer for him to accept the request for dinner from a stranger than to be left alone with only his own mind and whatever horrors that came along with it, to have a night of rough casual sex, before leaving early the next morning for work, with only a migraine to remind him of the man who had kept his lonesome company the night before.

Will was not in the habit of letting this happen but desperate times call for desperate measures.

~O~

"What did you say this was?" asked Will, examining the dish of brown and black grains in front of him.

"Moros y cristianos," replied Frederick, who was already picking up his cutlery.

"What?"

"Moros y cristianos," Frederick said again, louder.

"Uh-huh. And what do you call that?" Will said, gesturing to the meaty stew in front of his companion.

"Ropa vieja," Frederick enunciated clearly.

"Say it again."

"I'm sorry?"

"Say it again!" Will repeated, with a rare genuine smile.

"Ropa vieja," Frederick said, slowly and clearly to an almost patronising degree.

"Ropa vieja," Will repeated, fumbling over the foreign words. "I took a year of Spanish in high school but I don't think any of it stuck."

"Where did you grow up?" Frederick asked.

"Wow, doctor, delving into the tragic backstory before I've even started eating dinner," Will replied, sarcastically, eliciting a chuckle from his companion. "But, if you're really interested, I grew up in Louisiana."

"Well, then, speaking of languages-" Frederick started.

"Oh no, Frederick. You're going to need to get me a lot drunker than this to get me to put on my Louisianan accent," Will interrupted.

"¿Lucia?" Frederick called, raising a hand. "¡Un poco más vino para este caballero, por favor!"

And Will certainly didn't need any knowledge of Spanish to know where this night was heading.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation time!  
> Una mesa para dos, por favor - One table for two, please  
> Claro - Sure  
> Es guapo - He is cute  
> Bien hecho - Well done  
> Moros y cristianos - A cuban dish of white rice and black beans  
> Ropa vieja - A cuban dish of a shredded beef stew  
> Un poco más vino para este caballero, por favor - A little more wine for this gentleman, please


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Frederick go back to Frederick's house ;)

 

 

 

 

Frederick was sweet. He was a bit of a dick and he definitely had far too many insecurities patched up with a layer of false narcissism and show, but he had a good sense of humour nonetheless. He had also insisted on paying for dinner, although whether that was the sweetness or his persistent need for control not even Will's empathy could decipher. Not that the profiler cared very much either way- it was a free meal after all.

So it simply made sense for him to accept Frederick's flirty "professional opinion" that Will was simply too stressed to drive all the way back to his lonely house and it was probably the best option for him to stay over at Frederick's. The doctor, although seemingly tense enough to need it, hadn't actually had more than two sips of wine and was able to drive, meaning neither of them were about to make a move in the car, lest a second car accident were to happen that night.

Will did feel a small clench of guilt when he saw the prominent scratch on Frederick's gorgeous vintage Jaguar and thought about how much more expensive his insurance was going to cost now before that thought dissolved into the much greater feeling of awe because _gee, Dr Chilton had a really nice house._

Will hadn't really expected anything less from a pompous man who drove a 1958 Jaguar but that didn't stop him from marvelling at the sleek white tiled floors and the careless way Frederick tossed his keys on the marble counter and led him into the spacious living room. Will felt like he was dirtying the place simply by breathing.

"Please, sit down," Frederick offered, gesturing at the white leather couch.

Will eyed the piece of furniture suspiciously, as though trying to figure out if it could handle Will sitting on it in his worn jeans without somehow being tarnished forever, before gingerly seating himself on it.

It was quite a different feeling to Dr Lecter's office, which, although equally opulently and expensively decorated, had always seemed like it had a lot of experience with broken people. Frederick's house, however, seemed clean of, really, everything and Will didn't feel like he particularly wanted to screw that up.

"Do you want a drink?" Frederick called from another room, assumedly, the kitchen.

"No thank you!" Will called back, rather hoping to speed up the pace of the night and not even trying to feel ashamed of his impatience.

When Frederick then appeared in the doorway with a jazzy cock of the hip, having seemingly caught on to Will's intentions, Will considered for the first time how strange it was that, for a person who hated psychiatrists, he had a very confusing habit of kissing them.

~O~

"Oh my God, what am I doing?"

Will blinked and looked confusedly at the psychiatrist, who had suddenly appeared right next to him on the couch, his lips feeling slightly wetter than usual, before realising he must have blacked out again.

_Shit._

"I'm pretty sure you were kissing me," Will replied, not entirely sarcastically, desperate to smooth over any doubts the other man had about the night.

"I'm pretty sure I was taking advantage of a man who is not in a fit mental state to be doing this right now," Chilton said, as if the unethical nature of the situation was only just dawning on him.

Will internally kicked himself for letting his "unfit mental state" be too obvious. _Goddamnit,_ all he wanted was one night where he didn't feel like falling asleep was more dangerous than staying up for the next 36 consecutive hours.

His urgency must have been displayed on his face because Frederick then went on to mutter,

"this was a bad idea..."

"Please!" Will said suddenly, an unexpected raw desperation tinting his voice. "I want to stay."

"Will," Frederick said slowly, not quite catching the profiler's eyes. "Are you even sexually attracted to me?"

Will raised his eyebrows and almost choked on his own breath, before replying,

"yeah, I mean-"

"Mr Graham, I might be perceived as a shitty psychiatrist by others in my field but I can at least detect when someone is blatantly lying."

Blushing from the fact that this conversation was taking a direction he really hadn't wanted it to take, Will replied hastily,

"it's not you! Or, it's not just you. I just don't really ever feel that way about anyone."

Fuck it. If the night was going down the drain and Will was going to have to go home and battle six hours of nightmares alone, he at least wanted to clear the air first for the poor dejected man sitting next to him, who, after all, had paid for a lovely dinner.

"So... you're asexual?" Frederick asked, his brow still furrowed but his eyes wandering back to Will's.

"I don't want your psychoanalysis, doctor," Will said, bitterly.

"It's not a disorder," Frederick said, his voice growing a little louder. "Some people simply don't feel sexual attraction to anyone- it's a lot more common than you might think, and perfectly healthy. I'm surprised you never thought to look it up."

"I guess I didn't want to add another condition to the list," Will said sardonically and then gave a small laugh at the ridiculousness of going to a man's house with the intention of sleeping with him and ending up discovering his own sexuality.

Apparently the laugh induced a new confidence in Frederick, who smiled back and asked,

"alright. Maybe I should ask a more fitting question. Would you like to stay the night in my guest bedroom?"

"Well, doctor, I would be delighted."

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA I BET Y'ALL WERE EXPECTING SEXY TIMES  
> ASEXUALITY FOR THE WIN  
> HECK YEAH HECK YEAH HECK YEAH B)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning (and week) after...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I was so worried about making Will asexual but you guys seem to really like it and I'm so happy with all this positive feedback thank you so much!!!  
> I'm asexual myself and it makes me so excited that people like the idea of my favourite characters being asexual too!!!
> 
> ALSO, my friend and I are starting up a hannibal-fanfiction-beta-network so if any of my readers are also writers, we would be so happy to have you join!  
> [here is the link to the tumblr post!!](http://www.hotdadwillgraham.tumblr.com/post/90091276356/did-you-just-beta-me-a-beta-community-and)

 

 

 

 

Will Graham woke up the next morning with a gentle heaviness in his body, like the unfamiliar feeling of sleeping well had nestled between the cracks of his exhausted bones in an effort to keep him weighed down in Frederick's guest bed.

Will slowly opened his eyes and almost screamed at the sight of Dr Frederick Chilton sprawled next to him, still fast asleep and drooling slightly in his deep sleep, wearing a ridiculously boyish set of blue striped pyjamas.

Will's immediate thought was that Frederick must have crawled into the guest room with him in some creepy, misguided attempt at companionship, until he actually looked around the soft-white walls and the piles of academia scattered on the floor around the bed and realised that it was he who had crawled into Chilton's bed during the night.

Racking his sleepy brain for any memory of what had occurred last night, the only thing Will could ascertain was that they had definitely not had sex and that he was surprisingly, and thankfully, not sweaty, as he had become accustomed to being when he awoke these days.

A bout of anxiety temporarily overwhelmed Will as he remembered the conversation he had had with Frederick the previous night and how absolutely mortifyingly _sweet_ the psychiatrist had been about his condition of Not Being Sexually Attracted To Anyone Ever and how Will had basically cheated out a man from getting laid, a man who had paid for dinner and had flirted cornily the entire evening just to get an awkward mentally unstable loser like Will fumble his way into his host's bed during the night like a sick child.

It was probably for the best that Will would never _ever_ see the psychiatrist again and would never again so rudely impeach on his hospitality.

Gently sliding himself off the impracticably soft bed, Will tiptoed around the disarray of psychology magazines on the floor and slowly opened the door. To be honest, he could have made as much noise as he liked and Frederick would have been too deep in sleep to be awoken, but it seemed more respectful to the hollow house to be quiet.

After Will had pulled his clothes on over his boxers and undershirt, he briefly considered leaving a note, before discovering that all of Frederick's pens were kept in weirdly fancy cases and it was probably best to not risk breaking something expensive just for an awkward goodbye post-it.

He took a taxi to where he had parked his car the previous evening and tried to pretend the feeling gnawing at his stomach was hunger and not guilt.

~O~

"Don't worry. I won't leave you here," Jack said, leading Will up the suspiciously manicured lawn in front of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

"Yeah, not today," Will muttered to his feet.

After they had been thoroughly checked by security and led up a flight of stairs, Will asked,

"what did you say the name of the administrator of this place was called?"

"I didn't," Jack replied, knocking on the office door. "His name's Dr Frederick Chilton."

There was not enough time for Will to even consider making a run for it.

~O~

"Dr Bloom just called me about you, Mr Graham," Frederick said, his eyes widening quickly before reverting back to supercilious-normal. "Or should I call you 'Dr'?"

He was playing dumb in front of Jack, which made Will irrationally angry.

Just when he was feeling bad about treating Frederick awfully, the psychiatrist seemed to have this tendency to be a massive dick.

Ears burning, Will replied curtly,

"It's just 'Mr'. I'd like to see the crime scene now."

Jack's eyes narrowed as he looked between the two men suspiciously, not buying Chilton's false smile and overly-pompous attempts at hiding their relationship, if one could even call it that.

~O~

Will was finding it harder to concentrate on the dead nurse in front of him with Frederick snooping around the background, no doubt fascinated by Will's oh-so-special psyche in the works. Although he had a feeling from the scene that Gideon was not the ripper, he felt like he needed to conduct further investigation to be certain.

It was definitely _not_ because he wanted Chilton to be right about something in his life.

~O~

"Jack, I'll meet you at the car," Will muttered to the agent, as they were heading back from the scene, both frustrated at the lack of answers it had provided.

Jack frowned, but nodded with only a brief threat of "don't discuss the case with him, Graham", before turning the corner around the corridor towards the exit.

Not for the first time, Will silently thanked the universe for Jack's professional respect and lack of nosiness, unlike a certain pair of forensic techies he could mention, before ducking back into Dr Chilton's office.

Before the administrator could even start speaking, Will blurted,

"I'm sorry I left so early last Saturday."

"That's alright. I was quite worried that you had wandered off in your sleep though."

"Is that how I ended up in your bed?" Will asked, wincing at the burn spreading across his neck like a fever.

"I am almost certain you were awake and unable to sleep, instead of the other way around," Frederick replied, fiddling with one of the stupidly expensive pens on his desk.

"Are you angry that I left?"

"Do you want me to be angry at you, Will?"

Will wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that so he ended up saying, in a half-plead,

 _"please,_ for the love of God, _stop_ psychoanalysing me!"

"Will," Frederick said, standing up and imploringly taking Will's hand in his. "I feel like we need to talk about this."

Wrenching his hand from the psychiatrist's, Will replied, forcefully,

"I don't need anything from you, doctor."

Edging towards the door, he said,

"I'll see you when I conduct Gideon's interview. Not before and, hopefully, not after."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Will is having massive mood swings / out of character moments because of his mental instability and stress and not because of my shitty writing hahahahaha...
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [and don't forget about the network!](http://www.hotdadwillgraham.tumblr.com/post/90091276356/did-you-just-beta-me-a-beta-community-and)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The willton is finally and officially real.

 

 

 

 

It was seven o'clock in the evening, two days after Gideon's interview, while Will was lying on his couch stroking a miscellaneous short-haired dog with one hand and a miscellaneous fluffy dog with the other, when the phone started to ring. He had half a mind to ignore it: there was an overwhelming likelihood that it was Jack Crawford with another body and another crime scene and another killer and another panic attack...

But despite Will's greater attempts to ignore it, the phone kept ringing and the guilt swirling in his gut kept churning and, with a sigh, he leant over and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Will?"

It definitely wasn't Jack.

"I'm sorry, who's calling?" Will asked, although he had quite a good idea.

"This is Dr. Frederick Chilton," the voice replied, confirming Will's suspicions.

"How did you get my number?" Will sighed, rubbing his face defeatedly.

"You gave it to me, don't you remember?" Frederick replied, sounding amused.

"I've become rather bad at that lately. Remembering, I mean," Will said, sacrificing his pride in the hope that the psychiatrist would hang up quickly out of uncomfortable guilt.

"Will, I'm really sorry if I've offended you-"

"You haven't offended me," Will interrupted. He might be a sarcastic asshole but Will Graham was no liar.

"... or maybe I was too presumptuous the first night we met," Frederick continued, apparently unaware that he had just been interrupted. "But I feel like I should clear the air."

Will inhaled and exhaled a long, slow breath.

"I don't think this is the kind of conversation we should have over the phone, Frederick."

Pause.

"You're quite right," the psychiatrist said quickly, and Will's ear was suddenly met with a dial tone as Frederick hung up.

Will felt peculiarly empty as he put the phone back in the cradle, wondering if Frederick was going to call back but, after a minute or so waiting, he decided to give up on the insufferable psychiatrist, drink some whiskey, and watch inane sitcoms until it was a respectable time to go to bed.

Will didn't have any television signal from his secluded hideaway in Wolf Trap, all the better for avoiding violent news reports, so he was stuck watching the same two seasons of Frasier on his dad's old battered VHS-player. Truly, he was living life on the edge of civilisation.

He was on his second episode and his third shot of whiskey when he heard a knock on his door.

Will was almost about to reach for his gun, when he heard the unmistakable voice of Frederick Chilton, administrator for the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, requesting entrance.

Will looked at his dogs with exasperation but, after seeing their innocently excited faces at the prospect of a visitor, swung open the door for his guest.

"Hi, Will."

"Hello, Frederick," Will echoed back monotonously, before gesturing to his wrinkled, dog-hair coated couch.

The psychiatrist smiled politely and took a seat, only smoothing down his tweed jacket once. Will quirked a half-smile at the display of self-discipline.

"I'm sorry, Will."

"Sorry for what?"

"I don't know," Frederick replied solemnly. "But I feel like there must be something for you to be acting like this."

"Work is stressful," Will said shortly, still standing. "It's hard for me to keep an eye on my own consciousness, let alone my emotions."

"You're not dissociating, are you?" asked Frederick, masking his voice with concern, but Will could still hear some curiosity creeping in. Unless he was hallucinating that too.

"I already have a psychiatrist."

"Will, you should get a brain scan."

"And you should develop some professional respect!" the profiler retorted.

"Okay," Frederick said, extending his palms in defence. "That's fair."

"Frederick," Will began, his tone softening now as he sat down in his leather armchair. "I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm not exactly prime dating material."

"If this is about the asexual thing-"

"Dr Lecter said that was to do with my emotional detachment, not my sexuality," Will interrupted, staring at the bottle of whiskey sitting on the coffee table between the two men.

"Well, then, all professional boundaries aside, Dr Lecter is full of shit," Chilton muttered, but they both knew Will could hear him.

"Whatever it is," Will said, enunciating each consonant for emphasis. "I don't want to get you sucked into it."

"Will-"

"No, Frederick, listen. You're a nice guy with a nice house and I'm sorry about your car but it's a pretty nice vehicle too. I'm sure you can find some Baltimore hottie who doesn't live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dogs and night terrors and who will actually want to sleep with you. Don't sell yourself short."

Frederick seemed to mull this over, fiddling absent-mindedly with the upholstery on the arm of the couch.

"You know, Will," he began, in that drawling, self-assured way that he did, standing up and putting his hands in his pockets. "The funny thing about allosexuals, I mean, people who experience sexual attraction, is that they don't actually _need_ sex to have a fulfilling romantic relationship."

"Yes, but that would be something that they would want," Will argued, standing up too now. "It seems unfair to deny that from them."

"Some would argue that it's worth it," Frederick said, taking a step towards Will.

"Some," Will pointed out. "The others are probably the ones who have tried and failed."

"Will, I don't want to argue semantics or statistics with you," Frederick said, honestly. "I don't know if this will work out or even if these relationships usually do. But you spent the entire night in my bed without a single nightmare. I think we would be foolish not to at least try."

Will eyed the doctor suspiciously for a few moments, as if trying to figure out an ulterior motive to the psychiatrist's proposition.

"Fine," he said, feeling like he'd just accepted a business contract and not an invitation to a date. "We might as well. And don't get smug about the nightmares because I guarantee they'll come back."

But instead of hesitating, Frederick's face broke into a boyish grin and he leant over the foot of space between the men, bringing Will into a tight hug.

"Alright then..." the psychiatrist whispered into the profiler's ear in a sarcastic mockery of sultriness. "What sort of whiskey have you got?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW it's been so long since i've finished a multi-chapter fic! it's so satisfying!  
> i promise i'll keep writing willton fics so just keep reading away and i am sure to come back to you (though i really really need to finish my hannigram one at this rate holy moly).

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued?  
> It is a mystery.  
> Would anyone actually read the following chapters?  
> Also a mystery.  
> What would actually happen in the following chapters?  
> MYSTERY.


End file.
